Naming the New Building

During Tuesday during I block, Monique O’Grady came to talk to H-B students about Arlington county’s naming policies for new buildings. When we move to the new building next year, we will no longer be called “H-B Woodlawn on Vacation Lane”. We will be “H-B Woodlawn at some nameless building” if we don’t decide on a name, which does not roll off the tongue as nicely as our current title.

Arlington recently updated its naming requirements, so now we have three options on how to name the new building. We can choose an important figure who helped shape history to name the building after, but this option comes with the asterisk of selecting someone who has been dead for five years already. This dissuaded many of the students who suggested we name the school after Graham McBride. However, there are workarounds, such as the Discovery school. Ms. O’Grady pointed out that since community members were unable to name their school after John Glenn, they decided to name it after his spacecraft Discovery.

The second option is to name it after an important geographical location. Our current building, the Vacation Lane Building, is an example of this choice.

The third option (that seemed the most likely and popular) was to name the building after one of H-B’s values. Some examples Ms. O’Grady gave that the county values are: inclusiveness, acceptance, stewardship, and diversity. Eleanor, a member of the naming committee, said that we should look at the big picture and try to encapsulate why we choose certain people or landmarks, and focus on our program’s values.

While we did not decide on a name during the meeting, this is an important opportunity to shape Arlington’s history as the community deliberates upon a name.

If you have naming suggestions, talk to Eleanor, or Maddox, our student representative on the naming committee.